2012-11-30

Ruins of São Miguel - Brazil (UNESCO)

"The São Miguel das Missões mission was built between 1735 to around 1745. São Miguel das Missões was one of the many Spanish Colonial Jesuit Reductions in Argentina, Brazil, Paraguay and Bolivia. Spanish Jesuit missionaries founded the mission for Crown mandated Indian Reductions (Christian converting) of the Guaraní Indians; and to protect the natives from the Portuguese slave traders known as the Bandeirantes.

The Treaty of Madrid in 1750 handed sovereignty over the area from Spain to Portugal and the Jesuit missions were ordered to move to the retained Spanish territory, west of the Uruguay River. The Guaraní tribes refused to comply with the order to relocate from their homelands, now deemed in Portuguese territory. This led to the Guarani War, and this mission's termination after a battle against a joint Portuguese-Spanish army, sent to enforce the newly realigned border between the two colonial powers.The cathedral (Catedral Angelopolitana), built in the 1920s in nearby Santo Ângelo city, is modeled after the São Miguel das Missões reduction." In: Wikipedia